we met in about september 87 . me and my mate neil went round to
this guys house cos ged who i met a couple of weeks b4 said he
had deks and similar tunes .. i had one dek and a load of hifi
parts made into something like a dj mixr and a casio sk1 and
loads of tape deks with fly pause butns . he had butchered
walkmans with varispeed, boxes, 2deks . old hifi deks with a
hole in the bottom for you to put a screwdriver in to adjust
the pitch . we could get it down to about 30% but you had to
tilt the deks while trax were on and if you were careful the
needle would stay on. we did loads of tapes like that, going
back and forth from mine to his . started using the sk1 for
more stuff . got a drum machine. got a delay/sampler.
stuff started getting more complicated but better. as
soon as we got the drum machine everything was rooted there
for a while so mixes had loads more repetition. mostly just
cutting the same beats on the deks over and over and dubbing
through delay to make the beats more complex . drum machine
hooking it all up . 606 triggering the delays to cut up live
scratching. make the patterns more complicated so it sounds
like the latin rascals are editing you live . the sk1 was a
bit weak for long sounds . we got more synths, and got into
them. we met this kid daz. he worked in a gear shop in
rochdale and had loads of gear upstairs. casio fz. roland r8.
atari . we were in heaven there for a while til we realised
there was too much gear for us to understand at once and the
tunes were suffering. we kept our knowledge and went back
home. all the gear was round at his by that point so we had a
base to build from .
we started djing on a local
pirate station. we met andy . we did some stuff for his prog.
he was into it. the guys who owned the gear were, and said we
could play again . we started doing trax for the radio ..we
spent a lot of time . we put out one on a label from stevenage
yeah and got conned stupidly .. up north there was
thunderdome, konspiracy, hippodrome, clear . . jay wearden and
moggy cleaning us out every weekend.
so round at daz's
shop one day after work and he goes 'why don't you send stuff
to warp yer always going on about how good they are' i
remember well vividly sitting on the steps at the back of his
shop with el-ef-oh playing on the shop stereo as he said it .
so we did, and they got into one track on 2 tapes . 'crystel',
along with 'the egg' were the first things they had off us
they were prepared to put out. we were well up4it. ai came
out. met DR . clicked. we started getting phone calls from
people we didn't know . journos. agents . etc. we started
putting incunabula together from a wealth of old trax, sending
warp tapes for a year or so b4 they got their heads round it
all. they put out incunabula. we were in the face. indie no1.
loads of twats everywhere.
we met so many twats. and a
few nice people. .. .. it was good . i remember sitting there
with the day today on the tv trying to sort out our u s tour
and getting weakened cos by the time the coked up tosser on
the other end of the phone had finished complimenting us the
prog had finished and all that was left to watch was radiohead
doing creep live somewhere.remember it sounded like it had
been written with a sequencer. we started getting work
requests . a few surprises . coil got in touch which was very
special.
started meeting loads of good people. some
likeminded. we were living in a huge house near prestwich with
a load of mates and most of the best parties we went to in
those days were there. no clubs we went to played anything
near what we were into . hardcore had become really cartoony
and besides no-one played it anymore it was all progressive
house and the like. we were doing quite a bit of live stuff by
that point. it had seemed like a natural thing to do cos we
were recording so many of our tracks realtime and we had it
down. we'd set gear up in the house for parties. oscillate in
birmingham was one of the first things we did . they were cool
kids and their events went from strength to strength . about
the only place north of watford you could hear 'digeridoo'
with 2000 kids and never see a stilt walker . we went to the
usofa. that was pretty funny. went there with lewis keogh and
this bloke called sus who used to tour manage for aerosmith.
informative. did some more uk dates. went to moscow. delivered
amber. moved to sheffield. went to australia. did more gigs.
wax lyrical. nonaxiomatic living room. toured uk with
freeform. put out some more tracks on skam. gescom stuff.
had a massive balcony overlooking half of sheffield
and carpets that move. spent a lot of time looking out the
window doing tapes for disengage, a radio thing we did with
gescom . solar heat gain. met chris c and alex r. plotted..
finally plucked up the courage to ring zoviet france. pulled
some guerilla moves together. no doubt all that will resurface
at some point . did some work for john peel. did some work
with chris c. went to japan. delivered tri repetae. another
usa tour. loads more remixes by then. moved house again, just
in time to hear the peel sesh broadcast. went round europe
with warp. skizm. delivered chiastic slide. . . all the time
scattered with gigs and recording. delivered lp5. compression.
looking to move, reduce distances. eventually settled just
after ep7 was completed . moved to a beautiful place out in
the country linked with a base in london's busy epicentre.
made confield